Amy Arbus, the illusionist, at the Griffin Museum of Photography

Sunday

Apr 21, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 21, 2013 at 9:14 PM

If you wonder why paintings by Picasso, Balthus and Cezanne are hanging in the Griffin Museum of Photography, Amy Arbus has got you thinking in her exhibit "After Images," now at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester.

Chris Bergeron/DAILY NEWS STAFF

After image: (noun) An impression of a vivid image retained by the eye after the stimulus has ceased.

If you wonder why paintings by Picasso, Balthus and Cezanne are hanging in the Griffin Museum of Photography, Amy Arbus has got you thinking.

More than that, she’s got you looking.

Arbus blurs the boundaries between photography and painting in "After Images,’’ an intriguing exhibit of striking photographs of friends, actors and models dressed and made up to resemble famous portraits by 19th and 20th century artists.

Throughout the Winchester museum’s Main Gallery, visitors will see photos that, at second or third glance, could be mistaken for masterpieces by European painters.

Paul Cezanne’s glowering self-portrait hangs on a back wall. Wearing an inscrutable expression, a young woman named Therese slumps in a chair in a painting by the enigmatic artist known as Balthus.

Nothing is what it seems.

From mid-distance, a visitor sees a man in a bowler resting a bony hand on the shoulder of a gaunt woman in Picasso’s "The Frugal Repast.’’ Step closer and you’ll see Arbus’ exquisitely detailed photo of models named Owen and Sam enacting an iconic scene reproduced so exactly Picasso would probably do a double take.

Since the late 19th century, photographers, such as the Pictorialists, tried to "invoke the gestural feelings’’ of paintings by taking pictures of them, said Tognarelli. More recently, Cindy Sherman photographed herself enacting roles from B-rated movies.

Tognarelli speculated Arbus wants to do more than reproduce famous paintings or make a personal statement about art history.

She gestured toward Arbus’ photo of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1917 Expressionist masterpiece "Jeanne Hebuterne with hat and necklace.’’ In her 2012 photo, a model named Nina captures the original subject’s coy posture with her inscrutable smile and penetrating eyes.

In each photo, she said Arbus leaves one element – in this case, the model’s blue beaded necklace – untouched, grounding the image to the real world.

By photographing staged interpretations of famous portraits, Tognarelli observed Arbus "created the dual illusion of dimension and flattened perspective’’ found in the original.

Yet, Arbus’ photos – even if placed beside the original – often appear more vivid, more lifelike while still resembling paintings from a middle distance.

In an interview withh a photographer Larry Fink, Arbus said she was "always too intimidated’’ to make portraits in the style of other photographers but creating portraits based on paintings freed her to "make my most unique body of work.’’

She said the juxtaposition of "painted costumes, props and backdrops’’ with the "unpainted element’’ in each photo make the paintings seem like they are "com(ing) to life.’’

In a companion exhibit, Stephan Sagmiller addresses similar issues of truth and illusion in "The Clouds: Experiments in Perception,’’ 11 fascinating photos displayed in the Griffin Gallery.

A recent graduate of the Rhode Island Institute of Design, he juxtaposes photos of painted skies from dioramas at the Natural History Museum with "real’’ skies he photographed across the country.

Sagmiller, who took a course with Arbus, invites viewers to reconsider how they distinguish between real and artificial representations of nature, which, in turn, forces them to ask "How do we know what we know?’’

Arbus is the second daughter of Diane Arbus (1923-1971), who is best known for her black-and-white photographs of marginalized people.

Based in New York, Arbus has said the portraits in "After Image’’ intrigued her because they "incorporated many elements from others projects … (including) truth and illusion, costume, unlikely contexts, time travel, drama and transformation.’’

She might be referring to her photos of Picasso’s clowns, a paint-smeared model named Nina posed like a Modigliani nude or a photo inspired by Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s "Three Graces’’ that might serve as an advertisement for Work Out World.

A clue to Arbus’ motives might be found in a quotation by Man Ray prominently displayed in the gallery that states: "An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.’’

By making photo portraits of painted portraits, Arbus has, indeed, triggered impressions that will remain in visitors’ memories long after leaving the gallery.